Las Vegas police seek information on scam artists
Scam artists have tried to profit from a hit-and-run accident that left a 17-year-old girl dead on New Year's Day, Las Vegas police said Friday.
Police said someone called a random woman this week and said her son had been jailed for his involvement in a hit-and-run accident in which Mayra Lorena Verduzco was killed.
The caller first asked the woman for $5,000 to bail her son out of jail, Detective William Redfairn said. The next day, someone pretending to be a prosecutor from the Clark County district attorney's office called the woman and asked for $450,000 in exchange for leniency for her son.
Redfairn said the woman who was targeted for extortion was not connected to the victims in the case, and neither she nor her son was a suspect in the hit-and-run. Her son wasn't even in Nevada at the time, the detective said, and it's unclear why she was contacted. No money was exchanged.
Verduzco was a passenger in a car about 2:15 a.m. Sunday when the vehicle was rear-ended by a 2004 Cadillac DeVille at Eastern Avenue and Canosa Avenue.
She died, and several others were injured, including her 2-month-old daughter.
No one has been arrested in either the accident or the scam.
Anyone with information on either case may call Crime Stoppers at 385-5555.
